(1) Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to an improved method of drug delivery. More particularly, the invention relates to an improved membrane penetration enhancer for use in the transdermal delivery of systemically active drugs to humans and animals.
(2) Background of the Prior Art
For some years, pharmaceutical researchers have sought an effective means of introducing drugs into the bloodstream by applying them to unbroken skin. Among other advantages, such administration can provide a comfortable, convenient, and safe way of giving many drugs now taken orally or infused into veins or injected intramusculalry.
Using skin as the portal for drug entry offers unique potential, because transdermal delivery permits close control over drug absorption. For example, it avoids factors that can cause unpredictable absorption from the gastrointestinal tract, including: changes in acidity, motility, and food content. It also avoids initial metabolism of the drug by the liver. Thus, controlled drug entry through skin can achieve a high degree of control over blood concentrations of drug.
Close control over drug concentrations in blood can translate readily into safer and more comfortable treatment. When a drug's adverse effects occur at higher concentrations than its beneficial ones, rate control can maintain the concentrations that evoke only--or principally the drug's desired actions. This ability to lessen undesired drug actions can greatly reduce the toxicity hazards that now restrict or prevent the use of many valuable agents.
Transdermal delivery particularly benefits patients with chronic disease. Many such patients have difficulty following regimens requiring several doses daily of medications that repeatedly cause unpleasant symptoms. They find the same drugs much more acceptable when administered in transdermal systems that require application infrequently--in some cases, only once or twice weekly--and that reduce adverse effects.
Transdermal delivery is feasible for drugs effective in amounts that can pass through the skin area and that are substantially free of localized irritating or allergic effects. While these limitations may exclude some agents, many others remain eligible for transdermal delivery. Moreover, their numbers will expand as pharmaceutical agents of greater potency are developed. Particularly suitable for transdermal delivery are potent drugs with only a narrow spread between their toxic and safe blood concentrations, those having gastrointestinal absorption problems, or those requiring frequent dosing in oral or injectable form.
Transdermal therapy permits much wider use of natural substances such as hormones. Often the survival times of these substances in the body are so short that they would have to be taken many times daily in ordinary dosage forms. Continuous transdermal delivery provides a practical way of giving them, and one that can mimic the body's own patterns of secretion.
At present, controlled transdermal therapy appears feasible for many drugs used for a wide variety of ailments including, but not limited to, circulatory problems, hormone deficiency, respiratory ailments, and pain relief.
Percutaneous administration can have the advantage of permitting continuous administration of drug to the circulation over a prolonged period of time to obtain a uniform delivery rate and blood level of drug. Commencement and termination of drug therapy are initiated by the application and removal of the dosing devices from the skin. Uncertainties of administration through the gastrointestinal tract and the inconvenience of administration by injection are eliminated. Since a high concentration of drug never enters the body, problems of pulse entry are overcome and metabolic half-life is not a factor of controlling importance.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,989,815; 3,989,816; 3,991,203; 4,122,170; 4,316,893; 4,415,563; 4,423,040; 4,424,210; and 4,444,762 generally describe a method for enhancing the topical (as contrasted to the systemic) administration of physiologically active agents by combining such an agent with an effective amount of a penetration enhancer and applying the combination topically to humans or animals, in the form of creams, lotions, gels, etc.
Penetration enhancers for enhancing systemic administration of therapeutic agents transdermally are cited in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,405,616; 4,562,075; 4,031,894, 3,996,934; and 3,921,636.